Italian Chapter

Polish Chapter

The Polish Chapter recently organized our fourth chapter conference on fire protection in storage and industrial occupancies. We consider it as success as the conference was attended by more than 150 people. We invited various stakeholders: fire protection engineers, authorities, insurers, investors and project directors. A summary of the conference with photos can be seen on our wesbite: http://www.sfpe.pl/.

This conference was particularly interesting for the audience as we have started to bring international speakers. This time it was Tom de Nooij from Netherlands, who represented NFPA, who has broad experience in applying NFPA standards in European and Middle East environments. We will be organizing the classroom training for NFPA standards, which most probably is going to happen in the autumn.

We have also been involved recently in regulatory negotiations due to a relaxation of requirements for the profession of registered fire expert. We have proposed some new solutions that were accepted by the Polish Government and the Parliament.

Spanish Chapter

The Spanish chapter is very close to formalizing the chapter into a legally recognized non-profit organization. This is a major milestone for us, as it will simplify the organization of events and courses that we have planned for 2016. We will have a large technical event in in April during which we will look into changes in our national legislation and also present the seminars planned for the rest of the year. The event will also include a presentation regarding the background/purpose of the chapter and SFPE.

Swedish Chapter

SFPE Sweden experienced a hectic but fun period of activities during the second half of 2015. The activities can be summarized as follows:

The result from the work to form an internal strategic document for the chapter has been presented to the members with a good result. Except for a new strategic plan, new bylaws were also presented at the annual meeting. The final decision about the bylaws will be made at the next annual meeting.

SFPE Sweden will organize a national conference in April 2016, and the work is ongoing but in the final stages. An invitation with a final program is soon to be published on our webpage. The theme for the conference is the diversity of the profession and how fire protecting engineers can work together.

SFPE Sweden’s local groups have had one meeting each. In Gothenburg, the topic of the meeting was evacuation upward and in Stockholm about a complicated garage complex. Except from these local groups, a new group has also started in Östergötland and they have had their first meeting as well about the fire control process in the building industry.

A new chapter technical guideline is currently being circulated among all SFPE Sweden’s members. The topic is rescue operations in high-rise buildings. The guideline will hopefully be accepted of the board of directors in March 2016.

SFPE Sweden has provided input to the National Board of Housing regarding references to standards in national regulations. The last meeting was mostly about the present situation with handling the refugee situation and shelters in Sweden.

Apart from being represented in the fire safety reference group of the National Board of Housing, SFPE Sweden is now also, as told before, represented in a regulation group for sprinklers, connected to the Swedish Fire Protection Association. Their first meeting was about standards and a future sprinkler conference.

SFPE Sweden has responded to one letter of referrals from the Swedish Fire Protection Association (about sprinkler regulations).

SFPE Sweden has awarded Björn Karlsson (Iceland) with the annual Swedish scholarship for his work in both the academic world as the private market.

SFPE Sweden has continued to increase its communication on the chapter webpage, Facebook and Twitter, as well as via our newsletter (published four times a year).

UK Chapter

The SFPE UK chapter continues to grow and develop, with its principle aims being to foster closer links between fire professionals who work in different fields or who are members of different engineering institutions; facilitate continual professional development for members and chapter supporters; and raise the profile of fire engineering and the SFPE across the UK including focusing on areas outside of London.

We are pleased to continue to run free monthly continual professional development seminars. In addition we have organised an NFPA 101 three day course and a custom NFPA 92 two day course in Glasgow, the first time it has been held in Scotland. While the NFPA courses do require a registration fee, these rates are held at as close to cost as possible to ensure high value but low price education to our members and supporters. These and all our events are open to all members of any SFPE chapter.